Marked for Makar Rybalchenko
From our football correspondent
Steady
The dugout29 Nov 2032
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Rukh have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Market29 Nov 2032
Mark Mitchell has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Rukh they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad29 Nov 2032
A falling-out at Rukh
Denys Pidhurskyi and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Player ratings29 Nov 2032
Successful dribbles: 22. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
The dugout29 Nov 2032
The manager makes an example of Pavlo Marlos
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad29 Nov 2032
100 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
Squad29 Nov 2032
“The easiest signature of my career.” Makar Rybalchenko and Rukh agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad29 Nov 2032
A row about effort at Rukh
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Raffaele Cantisani was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout29 Nov 2032
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Oleksiy Buialskyi after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad22 Nov 2032
A knee injury of the worst kind for Vlad Răileanu
19 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Rukh lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The dugout22 Nov 2032
news_b_frozen_out_of_the_side
Squad22 Nov 2032
A row about effort at Rukh
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Denys Pidhurskyi was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Squad22 Nov 2032
Tempers go at Rukh
Mukhammad Dzhurabaiev was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Match20 Nov 2032
A bad afternoon for Rukh against Epicentr
0‑2 to Epicentr, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad22 Nov 2032
100 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
Player ratings22 Nov 2032
Successful dribbles: 16. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
The dugout22 Nov 2032
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑2 defeat, delivered by Oleksiy Buialskyi to a room that had heard them before.
Player ratings22 Nov 2032
There was one mistake and it ended in the net. Defenders are judged on the worst thing they did rather than on the eighty-nine minutes either side of it, which is unfair and is also the job.
From our football correspondent
Steady
The dugout12 Jul 2032
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Rukh may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Market12 Jul 2032
Mark Mitchell has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Rukh they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Transfer targets12 Jul 2032
No thanks: Luken Álvarez rejects the move
Rukh had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Barcelona, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Squad12 Jul 2032
Words exchanged at Rukh
Denys Kuzyk and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad12 Jul 2032
Makar Rybalchenko is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad12 Jul 2032
Danylo Ishchenko has improved at 26, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Squad12 Jul 2032
“The easiest signature of my career.” Mukhammad Dzhurabaiev and Rukh agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Transfer targets12 Jul 2032
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Metalist have kept their man, and Rukh go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Transfer targets12 Jul 2032
A loan enquiry to Feyenoord: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.